Boulder High School in Boulder, CO recently held a mandatory student assembly sponsored by the University of Colorado's "Conference for World Affairs". The CWA sounds like it ought to be a forum for discussing international events and public policy similar to Harvard's JFK Jr. Forum. Instead, this panel was called "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs". Students as young as 14 were required to attend and listen to Professor Joel Becker of UCLA make the outrageous comment: "I am going to encourage you to have sex and encourage you to use drugs appropriately....I want to encourage you to all have healthy, sexual behavior. Men with men, women and women, whatever combination you would like."
When Boulder High School sophomore Daphne White and her mom Priscilla complained to the school board, the board president Helayne Jones told Mrs. Jones to stop reading excerpts from the assembly because Ms. Jones deemed the language "inappropriate." This is the same language that Boulder High School administrators allowed students to hear during the assembly!
The CWA has issued a statement, signed by conference director Jim Palmer and others, saying the panel members talked "candidly and sensibly to the high school audience, providing cautionary information about alcohol consumption, drugs, sexual issues and teens."
It certainly doesn't sound to me like the speaker was trying to caution students about the risks of sexual behavior and/or illegal drug use!
The Whites dismissed the CWA's CYA attempt, saying: "The panel discussion was a completely irresponsible and dangerous invitation to Boulder High students to have sex and take drugs. Teenage abstinence was dismissed as an unwise choice and indicative of religious hang-ups."
Whatever one's views about the morality of *ADULTS* using illegal drugs and/or having sex outside of marriage, almost everyone can agree that those behaviors are very risky for children and not something that ought to be encouraged. 50% of all unplanned pregnancies are due to contraceptive failure and girls under 19 are especially at risk for contraceptive failure. 31% of U.S. women will become pregnant by age 20, and 80% of those pregnancies are unplanned (many as a result of contraceptive failure). Contraceptives and the new HPV vaccine provide only limited protection against STD's and 15-19 year olds have the highest STD rate of any age group. Half of all sexually active young people will contract an STD by age 25. Clearly, for teenagers there is no such thing as "safe sex" and too many teens in this country find out the hard way about this!
Abstinence is the only 100% effective method to protect teens from pregnancy and STD's and is the healthy thing for teens even without taking into consideration the whole morality aspect. That's the message teens should be hearing not a dangerous encouragement of risky behavior!
NOTE: Update including full transcript from the assembly can be found here.
A second update on the situation can be found here.
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